Customer Reviews

Fodor's Essential USA, 1st Edition: Spectacular Cities, Natural Wonders, and Great American Road Trips (Travel Guide)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

One of the advantage's of being a travel writer is that every once and a while someone offers you a book of interest to take a look at. Fodor's thought that their new Essential USA would be right up my alley - and they were right.

I love the way that this book is laid out - it is done like you would fly or drive to a particular area and then explore around the area. Not only are the place descriptions right on, but they also provide insider information on the best times to visit, interesting little factoids, top experiences and much more. They also include lesser known locations and quirky, fun places to see. The dining and places to stay offer a broad range of options for every taste.

Whether you enjoy national parks, shopping, museums, food experiences or a little of everything, this book will lead you in the right direction.

If you are a serious road tripper, you must have this book by your side.

There are so many great sites to see in this nation that it's impossible to do them all justice in a book of this size. However, Essential USA is good at what it does. It provides an overview and helps you hit the highlights.

Though this travel guide covers all 50 states, it was a great reference for a recent road trip we took through 6 states. It guides some of our decisions on what attractions to visit, and gave us interesting background about regions we were passing through. One feature I really liked was the suggested itinerary, depending on how many days you would be in an area: one day, two days, or even up to a whole week. While far from exhaustive, it's a great overview of our country's natural wonders and man-made attractions.

Excellent guide for traveling, we have found so many interesting places we want to visit that we were not aware of prior to getting this book

Even with our GPS, we used this a lot on our 4500 mile trip. Great layout, easy to read, and a tremendous amount of information.

I regret having purchased this guide and having being unfaithful to Lonely Planet. I made a roadtrip through New England and this guidebook was useless for that purpose. It gives an overall flavour of what one should visit in the US and remains on the beaten track. Hence it may be OK for weekend city-trips but lacks the depth of LP for travelling overland. Luckily the friend I was traveling with had the LP!

I like this book for planning trips, but it isn't my favorite. It lists things to do and places to see, but it isn't as organized as other books. I would recommend going to the library for this book instead of buying it!

I can't imagine anything worse than trying to devote a single guide book to America's top 35 national tourist attractions. At nearly 700 pages, it still falls woefully short of doing justice to ANY of the sites listed. For example, the chapter on Yosemite National Park (my main interest in this guide) is a mere 17-pages and contains very little data on nearby Sequoia or King's Canyon National Parks. This book is a wasted effort if there ever was one - trying to cover too much material and doing a poor job throughout. If there was ever a book that deserved to be burned, this is it.

If you MUST resort to a book like this, for Pete's sake don't buy it - try to locate a copy at your local library and photocopy just the chapter you're interested in.

really like the layout and information of the book but some parts are obviously written for americans travelling america, which doesn't really help me!